Living ‘in the world’ as we do, we necessarily are Martha for most of the day.  As a poem that adorns many a kitchen reads, ‘Although I must have Martha’s hands, I have a Mary mind‘².  That ‘Mary mind’ – or contemplative heart – must compete with our daily work for our attention… and there’s always so much to do, isn’t there?  But before we Marthas dismiss St Francis de Sales as laudable but impractical, consider this poem written by a veritable Martha, aka Fay Inchfawn:

The Housewife

See, I am cumbered, Lord,

With serving, and with small vexatious things.

Upstairs, and down, my feet

Must hasten, sure and fleet.

So weary that I cannot heed Thy word;

So tired, I cannot now mount up with wings.

I wrestle – how I wrestle! – through the hours.

Nay, not with principalities, nor powers –

Dark spiritual foes of God’s and man’s –

But with antagonistic pots and pans:

With footmarks in the hall,

With smears upon the wall,

With doubtful ears, and small unwashen hands,

And with a babe’s innumerable demands.

I toil with feverish haste, while tear-drops glisten,

(O, child of mine, be still.  And listen – listen!)

At last, I laid aside

Important work, no other hands could do

So well (I thought), no skill contrive so true.

And with my heart’s door open – open wide –

With leisured feet, and idle hands, I sat.

I, foolish, fussy, blind as any bat,

Sat down to listen, and to learn.  And lo,

My thousand tasks were done the better so.

Just a few minutes in the midst of our busy-ness can open up our hearts enough to let God in and sanctify our work.  As we remember St Martha, whose feast it is today, let us ask her to pray for us that we will not ‘worry and fret about so many things‘ but remember to keep re-focusing our attention on the Lord, who is to be found among the pots and pans and things – if only we care to look.

St Martha of Bethany, pray for us.

__________________________

¹ I’ve looked, but I’m afraid I can’t find the quotation now.  If I find it subsequently (or if you know, post a comment and) I’ll update the post.

² ‘Lord of all pots and pans and things‘ .  Authorship is there attributed to Klara Munkres, but I’ve also seen it attributed to Cecily Rosemary Hallack (1898-1938) or even ‘unknown’.

The only explanation you can find upon seeing the empty tomb is a cruel, cruel theft of hope.  Grave robbers have taken the body of your beloved Rabbuni.

But have courage, Mary of Magdala, for the one whom you seek is there, behind you!

The woman of misery in a moment is filled with the joy that is beyond all telling and becomes the first missionary: ‘Go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ (Jn 20).  Imagine her intense passion in that nadir being transformed to the zenith in a moment, then imagine her using that tremendous energy for spreading the Good News.

Mary of Magdala has much to teach us about prayer, hope and trust and service.  When we find ourselves in what we perceive to be a dire situation, we can perhaps see one very unlikely solution or have one very feeble hope, which then becomes the focus of our petition.

… but Mary of Magdala shows us how short-sighted such a perception can be, because we don’t have the vision to see what plans God has for us.  Remember the prayer of Mary, mother of Jesus, ‘they have no wine’.  Another person might have prayed that the guests suddenly have no thirst, or an overwhelming desire to go home, or to drink water, but not Mary.  Her great open-ended hope – which enabled her to respond so positively to Gabriel at the Annunciation – enabled her in Cana to in trust Jesus to find a way.

When we ‘ask, seek, knock’, let us leave the finer details to God, who already knows what we need before we ask him.  And, as we’ve remembered Mary of Magdala this week (yesterday, I know, but we had no Internet connection here), let us remember to ask her prayers that we might open our eyes and recognise Jesus wherever we are.

Mary of Magdala, pray for us.

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were making a cast in the lake with their net, for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men’.  And they left their nets at once and followed him.   Mt 4:18-20

How deep Peter and Andrew’s love of God must have been to enable them to leave their nets immediately and follow Jesus.   They already knew and loved God, so they weren’t really following a ‘stranger’ but one with whom they already had an intimate relationship, now walking incarnate before them.  How close to each other these brothers must have been that, when called, they did not need to discuss their response with each other, nor did one need to inform the other of his intention to follow!    Their response was immediate and their knowledge and love of God and of each other was such that no communication was necessary.

Contrast Peter and Andrew’s first encounter with Christ with that of the Rich Young Man.  He had asked Jesus what he must do to possess eternal life.  Jesus had told him to keep the commandments.  Then…

The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these.  What more do I need to do?  Jesus said, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me’.  But when the young man heard these words, he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.   Mt 19: 20-22

One cannot meet Jesus and remain unchanged. The Rich Young Man failed to respond positively to Jesus’ challenge and – where so many others we hear of in the Gospels leave Jesus’ presence happy – he went away sad.

Sometimes, through the grace of God, we are able to respond like Peter  and Andrew.  Sometimes, though, we fail to meet the challenge… but let that never be the end of the story.  I like to think that the Rich Young Man did not then give up his quest for eternal life.  He had lived diligently according to the Law; he sought Jesus out to ask that question of him – he was serious about living a good life.  Even though he failed there and then to ‘rise up and follow Thee’, that response of Jesus’ would have stayed with him; it would have bothered his conscience and hopefully would have informed his subsequent life-choices.  Perhaps, little by little, he began to let go of his attachment to his material goods and eventually gained his soul’s desire.

God knows we don’t always get it right and just a couple of chapters later in Matthew, Jesus tells the parable of the two sons  (‘My boy, you go and work in the vineyard today.’  ‘I will not go’ he answered, but afterwards though better of it and went’. Mt 21:28-32), which – if he came to hear of it – would have been a great comfort to the Rich Young Man and was perhaps the very thing he needed to spur him further along his way to eternal life.

When we fail, let it not be the end of the story, for God is infinitely patient and will help us again and again to rise up and follow him.

As is characteristic, he made no bones about what he expected, saying, ‘above all, let not the evil of murmuring appear in the least word or sign for any reason whatever‘ (ch.34); yet he showed his compassion and understanding of human weakness by recommending (in ch. 35), that ‘servers receive each a  cup of drink and a piece of bread over the prescribed portion, that they may serve their brethren at the time of refection without murmuring and undue strain‘.

Benedict understood that a culture of murmuring would poison the spirit of fraternal love in a community.  He wisely advised his his monks not only to guard against murmuring individually but also to try to avoid giving others cause to murmur.

Murmuring is not the same as complaining (always to the right person or not at all!) and certainly not the same as speaking up against injustice.  Murmuring is voicing our discontent informally to the wrong people – to colleagues about superiors; to family members about work or school; to anyone who will listen about ‘the way things are done around here’.

Controlling our own tendency to murmur is one thing, but we have less control over the murmurings of others.  It’s hard to endure a murmuring culture and even harder to break that negative cycle and bring to it a positive outlook.  Hard, but not impossible: one person who never murmurs and tries gently to see the positive side can be the necessary leaven in a community.

Benedict’s feast is 11^th July; a Sunday this year but let’s not ignore him because of that.  Since he found murmuring so objectionable, let him be for us the saint whose prayers will support us in our own efforts to ‘bless God and do not grumble‘ (ch 40).  Let his prayers support us as we try to avoid giving others cause to murmur and as we try to break down the habits of murmuring we encounter in our daily lives.

St Benedict of Nursia, pray for us.

* In chapters 23, 34, 35, 40 and 53.

Now rather a lot of ‘hide and seek’ goes on in our house.  It’s all well and good as long as all the participants are happy to play, but sometimes the seeker gets dispirited or fed up looking and then it’s no longer fun.  Perhaps because of this, Dom Guillerand’s explanation of why God hides seems almost cruel.

It was our youngest child who shed light on the ‘hide & seek’ theory for me.  One morning, she came stumbling towards me, looking very pleased with herself because she was able to walk half a dozen steps in a row before falling into Mummy’s arms.  I remembered a few months previously, when she seemed ready to walk and I stood her up then stepped just out of her reach.  Unsure of herself, she needed much encouragement, but she did eventually take those first steps.  Hugs, kisses, applause… then I’d retreat further – you get the idea – and in that moment, I understood.

God is Our Father and we are his wobbly toddlers.  He’s not hiding just for the thrill of watching us search.  He hides – or withdraws from us a little – to encourage us to draw even closer to him… and perhaps to encourage us to look for him in different places.  ‘The dying, the cripple, the mentally ill, the unwanted, the unloved– they are Jesus in disguise’, said Mother Teresa.  God has confidence in us, even when we’re unsure of ourselves, because he knows us better than we know ourselves.  We need to seek him out and – upon finding him – step towards him in confidence, knowing that he will never ask anything of us without giving us the grace necessary for its accomplishment.

Some of John’s disciples had come to him to inform him that Jesus was baptising in the area.  You get the impression that they were expecting John to be jealous of Jesus, or to belittle Jesus’ work in some way.  Of course there is no such response from John.  Instead, he declares that Jesus engaging in his public ministry makes his joy complete.  John prepares the way of the Lord, then shows his disciples the Lamb of God and lets them go to him, never once trying to work alongside Jesus or looking for any recognition for his own work.  He is admirable for his humility alone, but when we consider the part he played in the history of salvation, we can see why Jesus said of him,

‘I tell you, among those born of women there is no-one greater than John’ (Luke 7:28).

John is always and everywhere pointing away from himself and towards Jesus.  That, surely is his lesson for us today; that we try to become less self-centred and more like Christ each day, so that he may be ever more widely known and loved.

If we’re not careful, Jesus somehow loses his rightful position at the centre of our lives and so we need to keep on repositioning him there.  Sometimes this seems hard because we find ourselves thinking, ‘but what about me?’  But to think like that is a false economy; John the Baptist shows us that.  ‘God calls us to his own beatitude‘ (CCC 1719), and it is through conforming our will to his that we will ultimately get there.

The following words of St Paul’s (Colossians 1: 16-17) serve to remind us why we ought to keep Christ at the centre of our lives.  To do otherwise is to fight against the natural order of things and is, therefore, a waste of time and energy!

‘All things were created through him and for him.

He is before all things and in him all things hold together’ .

Let us pray that, like St. John the baptist, we may humbly work to build up God’s kingdom, never looking for recognition for ourselves.

St John the baptist, pray for us.

O God, you are my God, for you I long;

God is everyone’s, not just mine, but here the psalmist shows his focus: ‘me & my God’.  Indeed, throughout the psalm, the only pronouns are I, me my, you and your.  It would be unhealthy and unhelpful only to consider our spiritual lives as being ‘me & my God’, but for this psalm, we’re invited to indulge a little in that cosy relationship of ‘just the two of us.’

for you my soul is thirsting,

My body pines for you

like a dry, weary land without water.

St Augustine famously said, ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you’.  I suppose the quotation is so famous because it hits the spot so accurately.  We have a God-shaped space within us and – on this side of death – it seems to be never completely filled.  The yearning goes on and on.

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary

to see your strength and your glory.

This reminds me of an anecdote told by St John Vianney (the Cure d’Ars):

‘When I first came to Ars, there was a man who never passed the church without going in. In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pick-axe in the porch, and he spent a long time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Oh! how I loved to see that! I asked him once what he said to Our Lord during the long visits he made Him. Do you know what he told me? “Eh, Monsieur le Curé, I say nothing to Him, I look at Him and He looks at me!” How beautiful, my children, how beautiful!’  (from Eucharistic Meditation #22, available here)

For your love is better than life,

Not simply better, but longer-lasting too!

my lips will speak your praise.

So I will bless you all my life,

in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul shall be filled as with a banquet,

my mouth shall praise you with joy.

And so the inevitable happens.  The cosy ‘me and my God’ relationship can’t contain itself.  God’s love of us is so immense that to respond to it even a little means that our cosy relationship out-grows the ‘inner chamber’ of our hearts and flows into a more evangelical, truly apostolic love of God and – therefore – of neighbour.

On my bed I remember you.

On you I muse through the night

for you have been my help;

in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.

What do we think of when falling asleep, brushing teeth, driving, hanging out washing?  When our hearts are unguarded and have an idle moment or two, they show us (if we care to take notice) where our riches are.  For the psalmist, his heart is with God.

My soul clings to you;

your right hand holds me fast.

In those two lines we find the summary of the psalmist’s relationship with God.  The simplicity of it is beautiful: our prayer and works of charity need not be complicated, acknowledged or measured-out.  God only asks for our faithfulness.  We would be wrong to think that God dumps us by the wayside if we are unfaithful, if our prayer lacks fervour or beauty.  For his part, he loves us unconditionally and will not let us down.

Although the ‘year’ is at an end, we must continue to pray for our priests (because the devil hates priests – it’s reason enough, isn’t it?!), but how shall we continue to hold our priests in prayer?  Like all good habits, we’ll be most likely to continue in our efforts if we build our prayer for them into our routine or use something else to remind us.

During our recent Parish Day of Prayer, Fr John Edwards suggested praying for the priest during the ablution of the hands that he may become ‘less unworthy’.   Only a priest, I thought, could put it quite like that.  Another priest, Thomas a Kempis, puts it even more bluntly in The Imitation of Christ (IV: 5, 1-2):

Had you the purity of the Angels, and the holiness of Saint John the Baptist, you would still be unworthy to receive or touch this Sacrament [of the Eucharist]… You have been made a priest, and ordained to celebrate the Sacrament:  see, then, that you offer this sacrifice to God faithfully, regularly, and devoutly, and that your life is blameless.  Your obligations are now greater; you are bound to exercise stricter self-discipline, and to aim at a higher degree of holiness.  A priest should be adorned with all virtues, and show an example of holy life to others.  His life should not be like that of worldly men, but like that of the Angels, or of perfect men on earth.

It’s no mean feat that our priests are striving towards and they need our prayers.  So alongside a prayer during their ablutions, when else can we remember to pray for them?

Casting your mind back to being seven (again!) you’ll remember being taught that alongside saying your penance and thanking God for the gift of his mercy, you were taught always to pray for your confessor: there’s one slot, then.

When there is no recessional hymn (ie. at a weekday Mass), it seems obvious to pray for the celebrant as he leaves the altar.  When you’re busy singing a recessional hymn, though, you need to find another time.  On our knees before Mass begins, for example.  Or what about continuing our First Friday practice, commending our priests to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?  You are very fortunate if you can spend some time in front of the Blessed Sacrament to pray for our priests, but if not, then let’s try to put some extra time aside wherever we find ourselves to pray for our priests.

For today, here’s an extract from a prayer by Fr Bruno Hagspiel, SVD:

O Jesus, I pray to You for Your faithful and fervent priests;

for Your unfaithful and lukewarm priests;

for Your priests working hard at home or overseas in distant mission fields;

for Your tempted priests;

for Your lonely and desolate priests;

for Your young priests;

for Your aged priests;

for Your sick priests;

for Your dying priests;

for the souls of Your priests in purgatory.

But above all, I commend to You the priests dearest to me:

the priest who baptised me;

the priests who absolved me from my sins;

the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who have given me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;

the priests who taught me and instructed me or helped me or encouraged me;

all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way, particularly…

O Jesus, keep them close to Your Heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.

Amen.

‘Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him. Know what you are doing and imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross’.

Those are the words spoken by the ordaining bishop to the newly-ordained priest, as he hands him the gifts of bread and wine to be consecrated at that Mass.  On one hand, you might wonder what on earth a fellow learns at seminary if, at that point, he doesn’t know what it is he is about to do.  On the other hand, how could he possibly know?  How can anyone ever fully understand the mystery of the Eucharist?

This weekend, the children of our parish make their First Communion.  If you were to ask any of them what it is they will be doing, they would answer you with absolute certainty.  Do you remember having that simple certainty as a seven year old?  The memory of it can be very helpful for us as adults for two reasons.

Firstly, if you find yourself assailed by doubts: you certainly knew what you were doing when you were seven, right?  So, remembering that certainty, pray ‘O Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief‘.  Trust that the Lord who has given himself to and for you will help you to know – as fully as you can know – what it is you are doing when you receive Him in the Eucharist.

Secondly, the memory of your belief in the real presence as a seven year old can be handy when the pendulum swings the other way.  Perhaps sometimes you’re allowed a clearer glimpse of the Godhead – masked by these bare shadows – than you feel you can cope with.  How can you – kneeling, waiting, unworthy  – bring yourself to receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of your Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, truly present just there, a few feet away in the approaching ciborium?  Try to recall something of that holy simplicity of faith: you did it when you were seven, so you can do it again.

And if you don’t remember your own First Communion, let our children jog your memory this weekend… and pray for them, that their devotion to Christ in the Eucharist may grow ever stronger throughout their lives.

‘If you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy.’

… So the saying goes, but it’s a bit of a harsh line, isn’t it?  Yes, there are many things that need to be done today, and a great many things that we won’t get done today, but we do seem to be able to get the crucial things done.  It’s a matter of priorities.  God is a patient and forgiving lover and it is occasionally tempting to neglect him because of that, but here’s another thing to bear in mind: He will never, ever be outdone in generosity.  If we are habitually too busy to pray – if we find ourselves saying again and again, ‘sorry I’ve had so little time for you, God, I’ve been so busy’ – we need to be courageous and do something to reduce our busy-ness in order that we might rediscover that time to give to God.

So we look honestly at our lives and pray that we might find a prayer-shaped window.  When you lose something, you look for it initially where you last had it.  So too with that prayer-window. It might be hard to spot, as there may be something standing in front of it now.  If so, move that something or – if it’s a necessary fixture – move the window.  You don’t need planning permission from God (even though your soul is definitely Grade I Listed – not that I’m saying you’re an ancient monument, but that your soul is a work of the ‘principal architect’) .  Put the window where the view won’t distract you, somewhere quiet and somewhere you will be able to visit at the same time each day.  I don’t know why it is, but it does seem to be the case that if one habitually prays at the same time, in the same place, then praying there becomes easy.  We are creatures of habit, I suppose, and like every good habit, building a good habit of prayer is hard work yet well worth it… but easy to let slip.  It is comforting, then, to remember this comment of St Benedict’s about prayer life:  ‘Always, we begin again’…